I'm just tired of this "revenge" threads, but you are right I should just avoid them.

So what? That only means that we can't know what the true sales rates would have been. And don't forget about the self-propagating effect of a product being sold out - it tends to increase demand beyond where it would otherwise have been. It's possible that, had MS or Sony had enough stock, each system would only have sold about 50,000 more total in the holiday season. We just don't know.

What we do know is that systems that launch first in their generation have, seemingly consistently, sold less well during their launches than other systems for that generation. This is the information we have available.

Also, I decided to look into the claim that the 360 was sold out, and the first thing I found was this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10156579/ns/technology_and_science-games/t/xbox-sells-out-quickly-across-us/#.UPEBmWJhNzk

"But 90 of the 200 people in line at the store were disappointed to learn they had to buy the $300 “Core” system because the more expensive model was sold out."

This is essentially exactly the situation Nintendo has found itself in, or at least that's what they claim. The Deluxe Wii U sold out, but not the Basic Wii U.

The point being, it's easy to paint a bleak picture when you ignore all nuance.

A little bit of irony, here, as ninjablade WAS the thread creator. I think the mistake you make is thinking that his intentions were as stated in the thread's title.

xbox and gamecube were never as populer as wii, ps2, or even 360, i think a fair comparsion would be to something thats availble and not sold out, i remember when the 360 out sold the wii its first december cause it was sold out, after the wii was restocked it started selling 3x the amount of 360 but ok i'm talking about demand the numbers will do the talking these upcoming months and you will see i'm correct, there is no demand for the wii u that my whole point.

your talking about the system being sold out of premieums the first day, nice comparison.

It wasn't a comparison, it was an observation. But hey, ignore the actual substance of what I have to say, and focus everything on the minutiae.

sorry i don't get your observation, when i ask you why did a system have a bad launch sales, i can tell you why each one of those systems did, but the wii u  launched with a killer app and plenty of stock, you reason why it had a bad launch cause it a start to a new generation, which makes no sense IMO, did ps2, wii and 360 have bad sales for there launch, yes they did but reason very simple there was no stock and basically proven by systems like the xbox and gamecube doing better sales and not anywhere near as populer.

All you've done here is show that the launch period means absolutely nothing for the long-term success of a system. Those launches were 12 years ago now; the market and the competition has changed somewhat dramatically since then. If anything, your comparison is less than valid.

Let's remind us what happened in 2001:

-Wikipedia launches
-Windows XP launches
-Original iPod launches
-Sky unveil their set-top box
-YouTube concept introduced

That was a long time ago, you know. We can't tell anything from the WiiU launch, because it means nothing in terms of long-term success. Why oh why we need so many people to make threads on this (I pointed this out in the NPD thread I believe) baffles me.

Wow another thread about it..... nice....good job guys keep repeating the same thing i cannot wait for ps4 and next box to be out.